Two years ago, a Boston Globe reviewer for a new Woody Allen film complained of the film’s lack of realism conveyed, he said, through the young heroine’s habit of reading Dostoevsky. No girl in her twenties reads Dostoevsky for fun, the reviewer maintained. I was rather surprised at hearing that confident assertion, for I was precisely that kind of girl when I was twenty. As a young person, in high school and in college, I swallowed whole whatever big books I could get my hands on, some (like War and Peace and Ulysses) because they were the kinds of books that I knew were important, and others (like Les Misérables and The Idiot) because they just sounded interesting. I loved every one. A wonderful thing about working at the Maine Humanities Council is that we believe strongly that anyone of any age is capable of enjoying good literature, and no one need shy away from large books.
One clear example of this is our Winter Weekend, which brings together a group each year around a grand, glorious book for an intensive lecture and discussion series in Brunswick. This year, it’s Swann’s Way. In recent years, we’ve done Don Quioxte, Magic Mountain, and Anna Karenina. People who love ambitious, important books have the opportunity to go simply batty in a group of like-minded bibliophiles.
Another example is our Community Seminar Series, monthly book discussion groups running January to early June in Portland, Augusta, and Bangor that involve a whole range of texts. Steve Cerf will be leading discussions around Goethe’s Faust (Part One only), and Margery Irvine will use Madame Bovary. Though not necessarily enormous books, these are powerful texts that hold their own in the Canon. Most ambitious, perhaps, is Peter Aicher, who shows himself unafraid to introduce a truly gigantic and staggeringly impressive book in his group. This year, it’s Thomas Mann’s Joseph and His Brothers, a massive, rich novel that promises to take up two sessions, (little known except to students of German literature and Mann aficionados).
We use a great many books in our programs each day, and many of them are not long but are still very powerful. Those are worthy, too, of the highest regard, and their own celebration. But as this New Year begins, I wish to hold up my little flag for all people who eagerly embrace big books, including those twenty-year-olds.
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Born to Read instructs all volunteer readers to read with great expression. Linden Thigpen, a volunteer reader extraordinaire, has no problem with that.
The Retired Senior Volunteer Program reading volunteers, who are coordinated through the Council’s Born to Read, are in some ways like the lute players who might appear before Ethelred the Great in 850 A.D. and tell an entrancing story about heroism and adventure, keeping all the nobles on their toes. The volunteer readers enter child care centers-from small home-based ones in an upstairs apartment to day nurseries that occupy a whole building-and read lovely children’s books with beautiful illustrations to children who are in the very early stages of learning to read and learning what ideas books can hold. This program is one facet within Born to Read’s quiver of offerings, all focusing on one goal: to ensure that Maine preschoolers are read to daily and are encouraged to talk about books.
It’s a fun program. Everyone at the Council knows about the volunteer reader faithful, people like Flonny Morrison, who has been delighting preschoolers for many years (and always shares her stories of how her readings have gone). The child care providers tell us how these readings help improve children’s vocabulary, social, and emotional development, but also how much sunshine they bring to the children’s lives. The readers tell us how inspiring it is to come into a room with ten bright little faces eager to talk, listen, and embrace.
Born to Read is seeking to expand its volunteer reader program in 2006. If you have one hour each week that you could spend reading in a child care facility in your town, please let us know. Born to Read will train you in using early literacy practices to have the most positive effect on children (including using games) and give you a bag of books to start with. For more information about a volunteer reader’s work, contact Born to Read’s Nathan Hall at (207)773-5051, or halln@mainehumanities.org. You can also find information about the volunteer reader program here
Back to the TopThe official MHC calendar that lists all of our events — including every program event — will be online in early 2006. For now, we offer you our grant-funded events.
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Poetry for Let’s Talk About ItLet’s Talk About It, the MHC’s reading and discussion series held in libraries statewide, is offering three new series in 2006: on American poetry, literature of the Indian experience, and the Maine wilderness. Let your local librarian know if you’d be interested in having one.
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New Books, New Readers and Stories for Life program director Julia Walkling was invited to join the Maine Re-Entry Network Cumberland County Steering Committee. The Maine Re-Entry Network program works to prepare former prisoners to be participants in society, focusing on 225 ex-offenders ages 16 to 25. The program currently is active in Androscoggin, Knox, Penobscot, and Washington Counties, and in September expanded to Cumberland and Kennebec Counties. Julia is looking for a way to use Stories for Life, the MHC’s reading and discussion program for prisoners and probationers, in this effort. Stories for Life has been known to deeply affect its participants’ perception of themselves, others, and the world around them, changing not only their thoughts but their actions.
Back to the TopThe discretionary grant deadline is rolling.
$5,000 to the Maine Folklife Center, Orono, for The Writing on the Wall: Oral Histories of Eastern Fine Paper Company Workers
Former workers will contribute their stories to staff of the Maine Folklife Center to create a DVD which will be the first step in planning a major exhibit to be housed in the former Eastern Fine Paper mill.
$5,000 to the Winter Harbor Theatre Company, Portland, for Shakespeare at Long Creek: A Hip-Hop Romeo & Juliet
One intensive month to study, interpret, & stage Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet with 10-15 boys at the Long Creek Youth Development Center.
$3,000 to Nee-Loon, Princeton, for The Language of America
A documentary of Native languages and the history and culture they reveal.
$1,000 to Mainely Girls, Camden, for The Girls Point of View Book Club
The GPOVBC encourages the creation of book clubs for Maine high schools girls by providing multiple copies of various titles. The intergenerational clubs focus on understanding girls’ culture as it developed and exists today.
$1,000 to the Camden Conference, Camden, for Teacher and Student Scholarship Support for Camden Conference Events
Funds provide scholarships for students & teachers at the 2006 Camden Conference, "China on the World Stage."
$1,000 to the Fifth Maine Regiment Museum, Peaks Island, for Sacred At Any Cost: The Men and Women of the Fifth Maine and the Flag They Followed
A exhibit focusing on the contributions and sacrifices made by the Fifth Regiment Maine Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War. The centerpiece of the exhibit will be the Regiment’s battle flag which is now being treated by conservator Gwen Spicer.
$1,000 to the Orono Historical Society, Orono, for Orono Bicentennial Lectures
As part of the town’s Bicentennial celebrations, the historical society will feature a public lecture series on Orono’s history.
$1,000 to the Norway Memorial Library, Norway, for Oxford Hills One Book, One Community 2006
Local librarians and community members are bringing a second One Book, One Community program to the Oxford Hills area featuring Suburban Safari by Maine author Hannah Holmes.
$950 to SPACE, Portland, for Mock Caldecott Marathon
This project will encourage children to appreciate and critique the illustrations in children’s books while at the same time they participate in the process of choosing the book of the year.
$500 to Newport/Plymouth Elementary School, Newport, for Picnic of the World
Grant funds will support a Native American cultural component as part of the Newport/Plymouth Elementary School’s 2006 anti-bullying conference.
Trudy Hickey enjoying a good read.
We’d like to share the interesting readings of the MHC staff during the past month:
Trudy Hickey, Office Manager and Grants Officer
I’ve been reading The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson. It’s a hilarious holiday story for all ages, featuring the six out-of-control Herdman children, collectively known as "the worst kids in the history of the world." When they turn their attention from burning down buildings to muscling in on the church Christmas pageant, chaos results and the bumpy road to Bethlehem takes some unexpected turns.
Elizabeth Sinclair, Program Officer, Literature & Medicine: Humanities at the Heart of Health Care and Let’s Talk About It
I’m reading Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, by Mary Roach. It’s a perhaps macabre, yet funny, riveting book that delves into the many productive uses to which cadavers have been put. Roach discusses the use of cadavers in: medical experimentation, safety testing, studies of the rates of body decay, organ transplants, practice for plastic surgeons, composting, and an eye-popping chapter on dumplings that is not for the faint of heart.
Brita Zitin, Program Officer, Born to Read
I am just finishing Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy by Gary D. Schmidt. It’s a young adult novel, and while I normally don’t read books for that age group (busy as I am with literature for adults and for very young children), I had heard so much about this title that I decided to try it. (Plus, New Books, New Readers had a copy in the office!) It was a Newbury Honor Book this year, and the accolade was well-deserved. It’s about a community of African-Americans living on an island off Phippsburg, Maine around 1912: the conflicts they have with the white townspeople are told from the perspective of the white minister’s son, who befriends a black girl named Lizzie Bright.
“I was really burned out when I started [the Literature & Medicine program] and I did not realize I had some of the biases that I had. And I think the readings helped me get some of those behind me a little bit. And I think I am a better nurse now…I have my patience back, and tolerance and a little better understanding of some people that I probably would have judged differently before.”
— Literature & Medicine: Humanities at the Heart of Health Care® was created by the Maine Humanities Council and shared by the MHC with humanities councils and hospitals nationwide. This quote is from a nurse who was a program participant in North Carolina.
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Notes from an Open Book welcomes feedback from its readers. Please contact Diane Magras by email at diane@mainehumanities.org or by phone at (207)773-5051 ext. 208 (toll-free 1-866-637-3233, ext. 208) to respond.